http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-open-question-on-vaccines-and-autism/

By SHARYL ATTKISSON
CBS NEWS

May 12, 2008, 5:09 PM

The "Open Question" On Vaccines and Autism

Perhaps the most puzzling thing about autism and ADD is that more than a decade into this public health crisis, our best, smartest government scientists and public health officials still say they have no idea what's causing it. Scary stuff, when parents having a child today realize there's at least an estimated 1 in 150 chance their child will have an autism disorder (1 in 90 if it's a boy).

While the government has been utterly unable to stop it, or even tell us what is causing it, they say they do know one thing: it's not vaccines. But today, in an exclusive interview with CBS News, Dr. Bernadine Healy becomes the most well-known medical voice yet to counter the government on that claim.

Healy's credentials couldn't be more "mainstream." After all, she once was a top government health official as head of the National Institutes of Health. She founded the first school of public health in Ohio, and then headed both the school of public health and the school of medicine at Ohio State University. She's an internist and cardiologist. And she's a member of the Institute of Medicine, the government advisory board that tried to put the vaccine-autism controversy to rest in 2004 by saying a link was not likely.

Click below to watch a Web-exclusive extended cut of Sharyl's interview with Dr. Healy: VIDEO AT LINK

According to Healy, when she began researching autism and vaccines she found credible published, peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the idea of an association. That seemed to counter what many of her colleagues had been saying for years. She dug a little deeper and was surprised to find that the government has not embarked upon some of the most basic research that could help answer the question of a link.

The more she dug, she says, the more she came to believe the government and medical establishment were intentionally avoiding the question because they were afraid of the answer.

Why? Healy says some in the government make the mistake of treating vaccines as an all-or-nothing proposition. The argument goes something like this: everybody gets vaccinated at the same time with the same vaccines or nobody will get vaccinated and long-gone deadly diseases will re-emerge. (When I asked about cases of brain damage resulting in autism that have been quietly compensated by the government in vaccine court over the years, one government official recently told me that "it's still better overall to get vaccinated than not to get vaccinated.&quot

Healy says the argument need not be framed in those terms (vaccinate or don't vaccinate). Instead, she says, we should vaccinate, but work to do it in the safest manner possible based on what we know and what we can find out.

That's what the parents of autistic children have told me as well. If we can screen children to see which ones might be more susceptible to vaccine side effects, and vaccinate them on a more personalized schedule that is safer for them, why wouldn't we? If it's safer for all children to have their vaccinations spread out, why wouldn't we? Healy says it's called "personalized medicine" and is being done in virtually all areas of medicine today with the exception of vaccines. Yet the government continues to frame the conversation in all-or-nothing, "one-size-fits-all" terms.

<>

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT: "This is the time when we do have the opportunity to understand whether or not there are susceptible children, perhaps genetically, perhaps they have a metabolic issue, mitochondrial disorder, immunological issue that makes them more susceptible to vaccines, plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to one component of vaccines, like mercury. So we now, in these times have to take another look at that hypothesis; not deny it. I think we have the tools today that we didn’t have 10 years ago. That we didn’t have 20 years ago . . . to try and tease that out and find out if there is indeed that susceptible group. Why is that important? A susceptible group does not mean that vaccines aren’t good. What a susceptible group will tell us is that maybe there is a group of individuals or a group of children that shouldn’t have a particular vaccine or shouldn’t have vaccines on the same schedule. I do not believe that if we identified a susceptibility group, that if we identified a particular risk factor for vaccines; or if we found out that they should be spread out a little longer, I do not believe that the public would lose faith in vaccines . . . .

It is the job of the public health community and of physicians to be out there and to say, “Yes, we can make it safer because we are able to say, this is a subset and we’re going to deliver it in a way that we think is safer . . . .” I think the government or certain public health officials in the government have been too quick to dismiss the concerns of these families without studying the population that got sick . . . . The public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational, without sufficient studies of causation. I think they have often been too quick to dismiss studies in the animal laboratory, either in mice, in primates, that do show some concerns with regard to certain vaccines and also to the mercury preservative in vaccines. The government has said in a report by the Institute of Medicine . . . in a report in 2004, it basically said, “Do not pursue susceptibility groups. Don’t look for those patients, those children who may be vulnerable.”

I really take issue with that conclusion. The reason they didn’t want to look for those susceptibility groups was because they were afraid that if they found them, however big or small they were, that that would scare the public away. First of all, I think the public’s smarter than that; I think the public values vaccines, but more importantly I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you’re afraid of what it might show . . . If you read the 2004 report and converse with a few of my colleagues who believe this still to be the case, there is a completely expressed concern that they don’t want to pursue a hypothesis because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people. I don’t believe the truth ever scares people and if it does have a certain edge to it, then that’s the obligation of those who are delivering those facts to do it in a responsible way so you don’t terrify the public.

One never should shy away from science; one should never shy away from getting causality information in a setting in which you can test it. Populations do not test causality; they test associations. You have to go into the laboratory, and you have to do designed research studies, in animals. What we’re seeing is in the bulk of the population vaccines are safe. Vaccines are safe. But there may be the susceptible group. The fact that there is concern that you don’t want to know that susceptible group is a real disappointment to me. If you know that susceptible group, you can save those children. If you turn your back on the notion that there’s a susceptible group that means that you are . . . what can I say? (13)